After the War, Before the Wall

As the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall approaches this autumn, much cultural introspection is taking place. The Berlinale recently showed a strand of films which presaged the fall of the wall, while the TV and Film Museum in Berlin will be exhibiting photos and films from 1989.

Now the Goethe Institut in London is running a film season looking at an underanalysed period before the New German Cinema. Running from March through June, After the War, Before the Wall is a selection of 20 films from West Germany which offers a real insight into that difficult time as Germany confronted the war and its aftermath. Giving something of an insight into fluctuating identity, the films are variously attributed to Germany (West), Germany (East), FRG, BRD and Germany.

Running pretty much chronologically from 1946 to 1960, the genres include social satire, war drama and romantic comedy. Opening the programme on 17 March, Die Mörder sind unter uns [The Murderers Are Among Us] (1946, dir. Wolfgang Staudte) is the only East German entry (and it would be marvellous to contrast the East and West German output from this period) and features Hildegard Knef's first screen appearance, as a doctor plots revenge on a war criminal in 1945 Berlin.

Subsequent screenings include a couple by expats who returned to the homeland to make films: Peter Lorre's only directorial effort Der Verlorene [The Lost One], from 1951, as well as cinematic titan Fritz Lang's Die tausend Augen des Dr. Mabuse [The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse] from 1960.

Social dramas are prevalent in the programme. In jenen Tagen [In those days] (1947, dir. Helmut Käutner), which uses a car and its owners to tell the turbulent history of the previous twelve years. The mixed race title character of Toxi (1952, dir. Robert A. Stemmle), confronts prejudices that existed against the children of German women and black American GIs.

Here's a familiar-sounding plot: two jobless male musicians go undercover in a women's band. Originally a French film, Fanfaren der Liebe [Fanfares of Love] (1951, dir. Kurt Hoffmann) [see pic] was re-made by Billy Wilder as Some Like It Hot.

And, finally, a tale of cross-border forbidden love flourishing among ruins. Himmel ohne Sterne [Sky Without Stars] (1955, dir. Helmut Käutner) is set in the no-man's land between east and west.

After the War, Before the Wall runs 17 March to 30 June at the Goethe Institut, London.

Lives Controlled

Goethe Institut
London
18 September 2007

As part of its Lives Controlled series on the former GDR's system of state security, the GI presented two documentary films on the state security service or Stasi. The feature I Love You All (Aus Liebe zum Volk) (dirs Eyal Sivan, Audrey Maurion) was a German-French co-production using the memoirs of Major S of his time as a Stasi agent, written in 1990 on the occasion of him losing his job after 20 years' service.

The film used a voiceover reading the agent's recollections and his bitterness at his change of circumstances, utterly oblivious to the effects on others of his activities and the distortion of the idea of the people's state. There was much humour in this, with such memorable quotes as "You have to force some people to be happy" and "Trust is good. Control is better".

Then there were the party songs, including such jaunty numbers as the border guards' ode to "so many skulls smashed"; angelic socialist children celebrating joining the People's Army; and the Stasi anthem about being "soldiers of the invisible front", surely a Eurovision anthem in the making.

The film never showed the agent, instead using archive footage and possibly reconstructions of surveillance but it was difficult to tell what was genuine. There was fascinating footage of the people invading Stasi HQ in 1990, demanding to see their files and daubing anti-Stasi graffiti on the walls of the hated building. Major S says very tellingly that the Stasi were more afraid of the people than the other way around.

While I found the film enthralling, others in the audience found it hard going and there was a rush for the exits as soon as the credits rolled. One viewer who remained called it bleak. An interesting point of the film was that surveillance of the population did not end with the fall of the GDR. Indeed, today's population is probably the most watched in history, with security cameras omnipresent and "anti-terrorist" measures still at work.

One of Major S's gripes was the lack of high-tech facilities at the Stasi's disposal, unlike their counterparts in the west. Presumably, this included paper shredders because when they were disbanded, they left behind reams of hastily hand-shredded files on the people they were meant to serve.

The short film which preceded the feature, Educational Film about State Security Files (dir Anke Limprecht), was as unglamourous as its title suggests, but equally gripping. Without dialogue, it showed in black and white the mundane existence of the people who are attempting to reconstruct the shredded Stasi files. Piece by labourious piece emerges from huge sacks, is laid out on a desk and then matched to other fragments.

It is a shockingly low-tech procedure. Not only do the staff not wear gloves, but they appear to be using standard sellotape to piece together the fragments, despite the fact that tape degrades with age. Another curiosity is the use of Pepsi Light boxes to contain the sheets.

Incidentally, in her book Stasiland, Anna Funder quotes the chief of the reconstruction office in Nuremberg as saying at the present rate it will take 375 years to reconstruct the Stasi files. It does make one wonder at the commitment of the reunited government to this project and also just whom it will benefit, once completed. Perhaps the Stasi have had the last laugh, after all.